Municipal government in Canada
From the longer Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_government_in_Canada In Canada, municipal government is a type of local council authority that provides local services, facilities, safety and infrastructure for communities.12 Canada has three levels of government; federal, provincial and municipal. According to Section 92(8) of the Constitution Act, 1867, "In each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to... Municipal Institutions in the Province."3 There are about 3,700 municipal governments in Canada.4 Technically the municipal government is not sanctioned in the Constitution but may be established pursuant to provincial/territorial authority. Municipal governments are subdivisions of their province. While the municipality has autonomy on most decisions, all by-laws passed by that municipal government are subject to change by the provincial government at any time. An example of a typical municipal government structure can be found in New Brunswick, which played host to the first municipal government in Canada in 1785 at Saint John.7 Regional municipalities In some provinces, several municipalities in a particular area are also part of an upper tier of municipal government, which provides more regionally-oriented services. Depending on the province, this second tier may be called a county, regional municipality, regional district or regional county municipality. In Nova Scotia, three municipalities are designated as "regional municipalities".8 A regional municipality is a single municipal government covering an entire historical county including all formerly incorporated towns and cities within the county.needed Within the three regional municipalities, designations such as "city" and "town" exist only as informal signifiers for historically chartered towns and cities that used to exist prior to the establishment of the regional municipality.needed Local municipalities In Canada the types of municipal government vary between provinces, although they all perform the same functions. The general hierarchy was established in 1849 with the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act. The largest municipalities are usually called cities, and their governments city councils. Smaller governments are commonly called towns, villages, parishes, rural municipalities, townships or hamlets. Some may also be directly designated as municipalities rather than as a particular type of municipality, but this term is still considered inclusive of all local governments regardless of their status. The term "borough" was previously used in Metropolitan Toronto, Ontario, to denote suburban municipalities. The Borough of East York was the last municipality to hold this status, relinquishing it upon becoming part of the City of Toronto on January 1, 1998. In Quebec, there is no legal distinction between cities and towns – although an informal and subjective distinction may be observed by English speakers, legally all "cities" and "towns" in Quebec have the same status of ville. Sublocal divisions In Quebec, the term borough is generally used as the English translation of arrondissement, referring to an administrative division of a municipality. Only eight municipalities in Quebec are divided into boroughs. (See List of boroughs in Quebec.) Unincorporated areas Some areas in Canada are unincorporated, meaning that they do not have a municipal government at all. Any government services in an unincorporated area are provided either by a local agency, such as a local services board or local service district, or by the province itself.4